Brian Smith Grow some balls and drop some players

[Guest]

Ask the greatest player to ever have played for this club in my lifetime (Artie Beetson) about our recruitment. He'll tell you! That bloke from Melbourne is not a recruiters arse. It all starts with the recruitment. The treatment they gave Arthur made me almost throw this club in the bin.

[Vasco]

Ask the greatest player to ever have played for this club in my lifetime (Artie Beetson) about our recruitment. He'll tell you! That bloke from Melbourne is not a recruiters arse. It all starts with the recruitment. The treatment they gave Arthur made me almost throw this club in the bin.

Sounds like sour grapes to me.

[Guest]

I don't see what POS has done wrong. Most of the signings he has made have been solid for us.

It's the ones who were already here that are causing the problem.

[Guest]

It's hard to turn around a club thats been in decay for over 4 years,in one season.

with an iunherited team

[Guest]

Up until this year, O'Sullivan's signings had been pretty much duds.

His retention of SKD, Perrett, Myles, Symonds, Jones, Cherrington, Friend, Pearce, M Aubusson, Nuuausala to long term deals has been a positive, but in terms of bringing players from other clubs, well, they have either been big names who haven't been great, or 'diamond in the rough' signings who never emerged from the rough.

O'Sullivan has been here since 2008:

Albert Hopoate - dud
Tevita Folau - dud
Brent Grose - dud
Jordan Tansey - dud
Smith Samau - dud
Sisa Waqa - dud

What was the point of these signings?

Mark O'Meley - good first season, rubbish second
Willie Mason - good first season, rubbish second
James Aubusson - never shown anything with us

Signings these blokes cost us Shillington, Tupou and L'Estrange respectively.

This season, however, I see more from our signings. Kouparitsas might be bloody average, but he is on peanuts from what I hear, Ryles has been strong, Hargreaves is a project player, and Conn and Guerra have far exceeded all expectations.

[Guest]

The biggest myth this club has ever signed.

YOu were quiet after the roosters took at the SG Ball comp. No credit for O'Sulliven for putting together a talented group of players having regard to our non-existent junior base?

[Cockadoodledoo]

YOu were quiet after the roosters took at the SG Ball comp. No credit for O'Sulliven for putting together a talented group of players having regard to our non-existent junior base?

Actually I wasn't.. I congratulated them on the wall.. Problem is he is here to recruit players for First Grade too... We won SG Ball 2 years ago and their best player is gone.. Having the best junior team means squat when most either don't kick on or go elsewhere.. Soon enough we will go on another spending spree on aging hero's elsewhere and all the best young players will be gone again.

[Guest]

IMO O'Sullivan is doing his job and doing it well. We will only be able to fully judge what he has done for the club in a few more years. It takes a while to bring young players through that he has recruited. He done the same thing at Melbourne and I'm confident we will see the same thing happen here. It's just a matter of time. With the likes of Cheyse Blair, Boyd Cordner, BJ Leilua, Kane Linnett etc. coming through, we will be very competitive in the coming years. Brian Smith has always stated that next year will be the year. This year was always seen as a rebuilding year.

[Guest]

we need to merge so we can be be up there with the rest, we have to many players that are past there best mini braith

Fair dinkum.....Go and have another beer or 5...

I have heard some dumb solutions to this problem, but that pretty takes the cake for most idiotic post of the year......possibly decade.....

[Adolf Fittler]

The biggest myth this club has ever signed.

Surely not ahead of Braith!!?

[Guest]

Mate I am sick of blaming all the shit players we have. It isn't their fault that they are shit and get asked to play every week. Smithy is a goose if he can't see the same shit happening by the same shit players every week.

I'll wait for all the suckers saying "yeah but we have won five games and that is equal to last year".

So who would you replace them with and who long would you give the new young players to gel? In other words how many losses would you be prepared to cop to say "they are no good for first grade"?

[theGman]

Actually I wasn't.. I congratulated them on the wall.. Problem is he is here to recruit players for First Grade too... We won SG Ball 2 years ago and their best player is gone.. Having the best junior team means squat when most either don't kick on or go elsewhere.. Soon enough we will go on another spending spree on aging hero's elsewhere and all the best young players will be gone again.

POS & Jaimie Mathiou philosophy = identify the top prospects @ a young age, sign them up & put them thru the junior development system (which over the last 3 yrs has been successful) i,e Ethan Lowe, Cordner, Blair, Atkinson, Miller, Te Kiri.
Brian Smith and his coaching staff = coach, mentor & develop them thru to first grade. Leluia will get his shot at firsts soonish and the young ones mentioned above should filter thru over the next couple of years.

When Smith signed on with us I recall him saying how impressed he was
with our junior development system/players & praised the good work POS had done to achieve this. He said he was walking into a club with better prospects compared to when he started at the Knights.

[BUDDY]

So who would you replace them with and who long would you give the new young players to gel? In other words how many losses would you be prepared to cop to say "they are no good for first grade"?

So are you one of them suckers who has said it?

The question is how long have some of the current players had to prove themselves? I am prepared to say we have half a dozen in the team that have proved over the last two years that they either were never or are no longer first graders. It is time to move them on and give others a shot. We have bought players over from other clubs who are now playing for Newtown.

I am sure Symonds and Kennedy will be part of the team very soon. I hope Linnett finally gets given a go. I hope they replace the correct players though. There are probably a couple of others who have also earned a shot. Speed and defense is a major problem on our wings. This hasn't been addressed all year and we continually get exposed. We get flogged one week and when the team goes up on Tuesday for the next game it is identical. We expected that because we played on the Monday night and think that there will be a few changes on the night. We played shit the previous two weeks as well. Yet on the night only one change is made albeit a good one. What is the end result? We get flogged again by a team who is missing two stars (yes I know we were missing one ourselves) then with 25 minutes to go they have only one player on the bench and we had every right to run over the top of them yet we didn't look like scoring and looked more stuffed than them in the end.

Pearce, Sydmods and Kennedy should be back for the next game. That will cause a shuffle in the backline but some of those same non-first grader players will still be there and will always be a liabilty.

I hope that answers your question.

[Cockadoodledoo]

POS & Jaimie Mathiou philosophy = identify the top prospects @ a young age, sign them up & put them thru the junior development system (which over the last 3 yrs has been successful) i,e Ethan Lowe, Cordner, Blair, Atkinson, Miller, Te Kiri.
Brian Smith and his coaching staff = coach, mentor & develop them thru to first grade. Leluia will get his shot at firsts soonish and the young ones mentioned above should filter thru over the next couple of years.

When Smith signed on with us I recall him saying how impressed he was
with our junior development system/players & praised the good work POS had done to achieve this. He said he was walking into a club with better prospects compared to when he started at the Knights.

I know that but they are not the best young prospects... They are good but look across the other clubs and they have as many good young prospects, in some cases better prospects.. I look at the Tigers, Bronco's, Knights, Parramatta, Gold Coast, Canberra and see their youngsters and they have a better crop than we do. POS worked in Melbourne with the biggest cheque book enabling him to sign up more than their share of talent and at the Dragons who have a massive production line which has not diminished since he left.

[Guest]

mini and skd have done their dash with me, they can go. mini might be a legend but he's playing terribly. the rest of em have another week. never thought i'd say it but we're missing pearcey. when we get within 15m of the line, whether on the 1st tackle or the 5th, its like they have no idea what to do, panic and throw the ball about like idiots.